I hate what the Catalyst and Cascadia discussion has done to Greeley.
A project that was supposed to bring people together around a big vision has instead pitted neighbors against one another. Outside organizations and disputed campaign money entered the conversation. Supporters and opponents questioned each other’s motives. The disagreement became personal, and at times Martin Lind was treated less like a developer proposing a project and more like a cartoon villain tying Greeley taxpayers to railroad tracks.
That is unfair.
I know Martin. I like Martin. I believe he has a good heart.
He has done tremendous things for Weld County, and I believe he sincerely wanted to create something special here. Cascadia is not a small vision. It is a swing-for-the-fences vision, and communities do not build extraordinary things without people willing to take extraordinary swings.
The proposed West Greeley development combines two related projects. Catalyst is the entertainment component, including a new arena for the Colorado Eagles, a three-sheet youth hockey center, a hotel and conference center, and a Mattel-branded indoor water park. Cascadia is the larger mixed-use development around it, with homes, businesses, restaurants, recreation, and other commercial activity.
The planned arena would hold approximately 8,500 people for hockey and 10,000 for other events. City materials cite an independent CBRE analysis estimating $486 million in construction spending and $44 million in annual new revenue from the arena, ice facilities, hotel, and water park.
That is a big deal.
Greeley and Weld County need and deserve something like it. We should not have to drive south every time we want a major concert, conference, sporting event, or family attraction. A successful destination development could change how northern Colorado sees Greeley and, perhaps more importantly, how Greeley sees itself.
So let me make this clear at the beginning: I am not rooting against Cascadia.
I would genuinely like to see it succeed.
But believing in a vision and placing taxpayers behind its financing are two different decisions.
What the County was asked to do
The City of Greeley asked Weld County to become a financial participant in the project.
That request came after Greeley voters repealed the planned-unit-development zoning for the 834-acre site in the February 24 election, placing the project in legal and financial uncertainty. The election and its effect on the zoning are now part of ongoing litigation.
Lenders also became concerned about the project’s financing. According to reporting by the Greeley Tribune, part of the repayment structure relied on annual appropriations by future city councils over several decades. Lenders worried that a future council might decline to appropriate money for a politically unpopular project.
That is when Weld County’s credit reputation became especially valuable.
The proposal presented to us asked the County to backstop a project bond reserve through what is called a “moral obligation.” Weld County also would have provided a $20.9 million, zero-interest loan that would be subordinate to the bondholders.
City officials said the County’s participation could reduce borrowing costs by approximately $100 million because of Weld County’s strong credit rating.
There is no question that saving $100 million is attractive.
There is also no question why the savings would exist.
The financial markets would view the project differently with Weld County standing behind it.
The contradiction I could not get past
We were told the proposed moral obligation was nonbinding and would not constitute County debt.
At the same time, we were told the project needed Weld County’s AAA credit reputation and that refusing a future appropriation could damage that reputation for years.
That is the central contradiction.
The obligation might not be legally enforceable in court in the same manner as traditional debt. But it is intended to carry real weight in the financial markets. Otherwise, our credit reputation would be irrelevant.
A different label does not make the risk disappear.
“Moral obligation” is a pleasant phrase. It sounds like something your grandmother would remind you about before church. In public finance, however, it means the market expects the government to step forward even if a court cannot force it to do so.
The City describes its own moral-obligation structure as nonbinding and subject to annual council approval. It also acknowledges that the obligation exists to keep reserve funds whole if project performance falls short.
That may not be traditional debt, but neither is it nothing.
Roads are different
I supported Weld County’s $10 million investment in improvements to the Highway 34 and County Road 17 interchange. I still support it.
Roads are a proper County responsibility. The public will own those improvements. The public will use them. They will serve residents, businesses, emergency services, commuters, and future development whether Cascadia is ultimately built in its current form or not.
But investing in public infrastructure is separate from making Weld County a financial partner in a resort, arena, hotel, and real-estate development.
Weld County can appropriately support economic development in several ways. We can participate in infrastructure. We can authorize urban-renewal tools when the legal and factual requirements are met. We can consider the customary personal-property-tax incentives we have used to attract major employers.
Those are familiar lanes for county government.
Putting the County’s credit reputation behind a specific development project crossed another line for me.
It was a bridge too far.
Risk should follow control and reward
I did not see a clear lifetime cap on the County’s potential exposure to the bond reserve.
Nor did I see comparable first-loss equity, a completion guarantee, or an operating-deficit guarantee from the private parties who control the project and stand to profit from it.
That matters because risk should follow control and reward.
The people controlling a project and receiving its financial upside should also bear its downside risk. Taxpayers should not become the financial shock absorber after private lenders decide they need more protection.
The widely discussed estimate that Weld County could receive approximately $670 million from the development also needs to be explained in plain English.
That figure is a 37-year nominal total. Much of it consists of projected property-tax and sales-tax collections, not direct income distributed by the project. It also does not fully account for every additional County service that a development of this size may require.
Growth produces revenue.
Growth also produces traffic, calls for service, court cases, elections, public-health needs, human-services demands, and wear on public infrastructure. Anyone presenting the revenue side should present the service side with equal seriousness.
The proposed zero-interest County loan created another timing problem. County funds would begin flowing years before meaningful repayment. The financial model presented to us did not show repayment from project revenues beginning until roughly 2045. Once inflation is considered, the real payback would come later still.
That is a long time to ask today’s taxpayers to wait for tomorrow’s projections to behave exactly as planned.
Financial projections are useful tools. They are not commandments handed down from Mount Evans.
The legal concern
I also had serious legal concerns.
Article XI, Section 1 of the Colorado Constitution says counties may not directly or indirectly lend or pledge their credit in aid of a public or private corporation.
I am not declaring a final legal judgment here. Annual appropriation structures have been used to avoid creating formal constitutional debt, and lawyers can spend several billable hours explaining the distinctions.
But avoiding the creation of formal debt does not automatically answer the separate constitutional question of whether the County is lending its credit.
When the financial case for County participation rests heavily on the value of Weld County’s credit reputation, that is not a question I can wave away.
Why I decided against it
I am one of five members of the Weld County Board of Commissioners. I do not speak for every commissioner’s private reasoning, but I owe the public an honest explanation of mine.
My test was simple.
If the capital markets will not finance this project on acceptable terms unless Weld County places its credit reputation behind it, then Weld County taxpayers are assuming project risk, regardless of what the documents call it.
That does not mean Cascadia is a bad project.
It does not mean Martin Lind is a bad man.
It does not mean Weld County should refuse every opportunity to help.
It means I could not support transferring project risk from the people who control and profit from the development to taxpayers who do not.
I hope Cascadia finds a path. I hope it becomes the game changer its supporters believe it can be. I hope the wounds this fight has opened in Greeley begin to heal.
Big visions matter. So do clear boundaries.
My responsibility was not to decide whether the dream was exciting.
My responsibility was to decide who should carry the risk.
For me, that answer could not be every taxpayer in Weld County.
That’s the reader-friendly version. Here’s the more technical answer…
As I understand it, there are two principal asks by the City of Greeley:
- A “moral obligation” under which the County would be asked to replenish the bond debt-service reserve whenever project revenues are insufficient.
- A $20,961,261 loan to the project’s 501(c)(3), funded through annual County appropriations from 2029 through 2036. The loan would carry no interest and be subordinate to the bondholders.
Dalton Kelley, the City’s bond attorney, has explained that the County could legally decline a reserve-fund appropriation, but doing so would likely place Weld in a “junk credit” posture for perhaps ten years.
That gets to the central contradiction.
The BOCC is being told the obligation is nonbinding, is not County debt, and does not legally pledge County credit. At the same time, we are being told the project does not pencil without Weld’s AAA reputation and that failing to appropriate could severely damage that reputation.
In other words, the obligation may be nonbinding in court, but it is intended to be binding in the capital markets. Calling it a “moral obligation” instead of a legal obligation does not make the risk disappear.
The draft Indenture reinforces the point. Section 5.11 contemplates asking Weld County to replenish the debt-service reserve after a draw. Refusing may not be an event of default under the bond documents, but the economic pressure on future commissioners would be enormous. I also have not found a clear aggregate lifetime cap on the County’s potential reserve exposure. If the reserve is drawn, replenished, and drawn again – or if additional bonds are issued – the County’s practical exposure could extend well beyond one appropriation.
The proposed loan raises its own concerns. The borrower appears to have little independent financial substance beyond the project itself. The documents disclaim any obligation by Provident, its affiliates, or the private developer to contribute additional funds. I do not see a comparable first-loss equity investment, completion guarantee, or operating-deficit guarantee from the private parties that stand to benefit.
That really concerns me. County money would enter the trust estate and sit behind the bondholders, while the private participants remain insulated from much of the downside.
The numbers also deserve some plain English.
The widely discussed County “return” of approximately $670 million is a nominal 37-year total through 2065. Based on the project’s own pro forma, it consists of approximately:
- $315.8 million attributed to the County’s share of project revenues;
- $102.4 million from Weld’s proposed share of the sales tax; and
- $251.6 million from assumed County property-tax revenues.
Discounted at 5%, that $669.8 million has a present value of approximately $208.3 million. Only about $63.2 million of that present value comes from the project-income share. Roughly $145 million comes from assumed taxes.
That distinction is important because the H&LA economic-impact study reports zero direct County tax revenue from the project itself, based on tax-exempt ownership and the County’s present sales-tax structure. The study also does not deduct the additional costs of sheriff, roads, public safety, public health, planning, human services, or other County services generated by the development.
The cash-flow one-pager is also not the kind of complete document I would expect before putting Weld’s credit reputation behind a project of this size. It does not contain a full debt-service schedule, debt-service coverage ratios, reserve-call modeling, construction-overrun scenarios, delayed-opening cases, or meaningful downside analysis.
Even before considering the moral obligation, the County would advance $20,961,261 between 2029 and 2036, interest-free and subordinate. The model does not show nominal repayment from project revenues until approximately 2045, and the discounted payback is closer to 2048.
For example, if we use the reported $125 million reserve figure and assume just one reserve call in 2029, the present value of the County’s project-income share changes from approximately positive $63.2 million to negative $44.7 million. That is not a forecast, but it shows how quickly the economics change when the supposed backstop is treated as an actual risk rather than a footnote.
The legal concern is as serious as the financial concern.
Article XI, section 1 of the Colorado Constitution says that a county may not directly or indirectly lend or pledge its credit or faith in aid of any public or private corporation, or become responsible for that corporation’s debts, contracts, or liabilities.
Article XI, section 2 separately prohibits a county from making a donation or grant in aid of a corporation or becoming a joint owner with a public or private corporation.
The question is not resolved merely by labeling the commitment an annual appropriation. Annual-appropriation language may help avoid creating constitutional “debt,” but the prohibition against lending County credit is a separate issue. If the project requires Weld’s AAA reputation to obtain financing, the substance of the transaction may matter more than the label placed on it.
County home rule does not provide a blank check either. Article XIV, section 16 says a home-rule county may exercise permissive powers “as may be authorized by statute.” That is narrower than the broad local-affairs authority given to home-rule municipalities.
Likewise, the intergovernmental-agreement statute, C.R.S. §29–1-203, allows governments to cooperate only in providing a function, service, or facility “lawfully authorized to each” participating government. An IGA can be a vehicle for exercising an existing power; it does not create a power the County otherwise lacks.
Our general-fund statute, C.R.S. §30-25-106, authorizes expenditures for ordinary County expenses and “other general county purposes authorized by law.” That last phrase matters. We still need affirmative legal authority for the underlying purpose.
C.R.S. §30-25-106.5 expressly authorizes certain infrastructure loans to governmental entities within a county, subject to underwriting requirements. The proposed borrower here is a 501(c)(3), not a governmental entity. At minimum, that contrast makes it difficult to assume the Board possesses an unstated general power to make a speculative, subordinated loan to a nonprofit project company.
The suggestion by the City of Greeley that counties may issue industrial-development revenue bonds, and that this transaction is “kind of like that,” is not enough for me. The actual Development Revenue Bond Act contains safeguards that point in the opposite direction:
- C.R.S. §29-3-105 requires the bonds to be special, limited obligations payable solely from project revenues and says they may not become a charge against the county’s general credit or taxing power.
- C.R.S. §29-3-111 says the county may not obligate itself except with respect to the project, project revenues, and bond proceeds.
- C.R.S. §29-3-118 says a county has no power to pay from its general fund or otherwise contribute to the cost of acquiring the project.
The leading Colorado case is Allardice v. Adams County, 173 Colo. 133, 476 P.2d 982 (1970). The Colorado Supreme Court upheld an industrial revenue bond transaction precisely because the bondholders could look only to the private lessee, the project, and project revenues. The Court emphasized that taxpayers could never be called upon, County general revenues could not be used, and the County’s credit was not pledged.
That is what bothers me about Brian’s suggestion to use Allardice or the industrial-revenue-bond statutes as support here. The safeguards that made the transaction constitutional in Allardice are the very safeguards this proposal appears designed to work around. We are being approached specifically because Weld’s credit standing is needed to make the financing work – if Greeley had the credit, they wouldn’t need us!
I’m just an AI lawyer, not a real one. That is Bruce’s job, and I believe his concern about the absence of statutory authority is legally substantial. If we decide to continue a conversation with Greeley, I think they need to provide an independent opinion that squarely addresses the actual substance of the transaction – not simply an analogy to something a county is authorized to do under a materially different statutory structure.
Beyond the legal issue, I continue to struggle with the basic social contract we have with our taxpayers. They pay Weld County 15.956 mills with the reasonable expectation that we will provide roads and bridges, law enforcement, public health, human services, planning, the coroner, and other traditional County services.
They do not reasonably expect the County to use its tax base and AAA credit reputation to make a private development financeable when private lenders and investors will not assume that risk on the proposed terms.
This is not an argument against economic development. Nor is it an argument that the project cannot be successful. It is an argument about who should bear the consequences if it is not successful.
Under the current structure, the developer earns a fee reportedly equal to approximately 5% of total project costs – potentially around $50 million – while affiliated private interests retain substantial upside. Bondholders receive the benefit of the reserve structure. The nonprofit entity isolates the private participants from much of the downside. Weld County, meanwhile, would provide a zero-interest subordinated loan and place its credit reputation behind the reserve.
That is not an ordinary public-private partnership. It is a transfer of development risk away from the people who control and profit from the project and toward the public.
Ultimately, I was elected to protect and represent ALL the taxpayers of Weld County. Why should the risk of this project be transferred to them? For me, the philosophical test is this: if the capital markets will not finance the project unless Weld puts its credit reputation behind it, then Weld County (thus, our taxpayers) is assuming project risk – whatever the documents call it.
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